K073 Symphony in three movements

* ‘three’ and ‘movements’ are, according to Strawinsky’s letters, mostly written in capital letters in the current English Strawinsky literature of today; the printed editions on the other hand give the number and the noun in lower-case letters almost without exception.

Title: Strawinsky was not happy with the title, because it could have caused misunderstandings which would be inevitable as, by the term ‘Symphony’, he understood nothing more than an orchestral piece. He therefore later stated that it would have been better to have called the work ‘Three Symphonic Movements’ instead of ‘Symphony’. The different contracts and preliminary contracts prove how arduous the process of settling on a title was for Strawinsky. At first, the title was ‘Concert Overture’, then it was changed to ‘Symphony Overture’ before the final printed title was published. In a telephone note of 20th August 1945, he referred only to ‘Symphony’, and in a letter to Gretl Urban of 30th August 1945 to ‘Symphony in Three Movements’. What appears to come from a further letter of 6th September 1945 to Gretl Urban is that the title in the contract must originally have stood as ‘Symphony in three parts’. After his letter of 30th August, there probably came back to him a return enquiry from the publishers concerning the title. Strawinsky explained that the title ‘Symphony in Three Movements’ was preferable and excused the use of the word ‘parts’, which was at the time still uncorrected, with the explanation that he must have been very distracted when he used this word.

Score:Only in the 2nd movement are there A clarinets, otherwise they are in B flat; in the 2nd movement, there is no bass clarinet; there are 3 bass clarinets at the end of the 3rd movement; the second violins are often divided into two parts. The printed score contains Arabic figures, for which figure 1 begins at bar 1 of the Symphony. Strawinsky himself gave it bar numbers but not figures, as can be seen from the sketches and particell pages, in which he enters the bar numbers in red and at the edge notates the identical units of bars in order to avoid having to write it out again. Bars 261–266 thus correspond to bars 146–151. Strawinsky wrote these numbers in a table at the beginning of page 13 of the short score, and continued writing at bar 357. In later scores, he abandoned figuring completely and instead used only bar numbers in single-bar numbering or in groups of five.

Construction: The Symphony in three movements is a suite-like orchestral work constructed from several episodes that are arranged sequentially; it has three sequences bound together by recurring groups of figures with a seven-bar interlude between the second and third movement which is led into attacca and which runs on attacca into the next movement. The first movement is not numbered but has metronome markings. The second movement is numbered and has the marking Andante, at the end of which stands the Interlude. The third movement is numbered and has the marking Con moto. The Symphony in three movements has so far not been convincingly analyzed. It has not even been possible to come to a consensus as to whether the Symphony is a Symphony and not a concerto in disguise, especially as it is certain that Strawinsky originally planned, not a piano concerto, but a concerto with obligato piano. In any case, Strawinsky understood the term ‘Symphony’ not in the dialectical Classical sense, rather as a synonym for ‘orchestral work’. Structurally, the work has two contrasting blocks, according to White. The first block is tutti orchestra with the tempo marking crotchet = 160 and the piano included as part of the orchestral forces, while the other block is made up of combinations of chamber orchestra and concertino instrument with a soloistic piano part and the tempo marking crotchet = 80. Seen in this way, the first movement has a structure A1-B1-A2-B2-A3, for which A2 and B2 are shortened repeats of A1 and B1, and A3 is a coda which is an extended version of the three introductory bars of A1. According to Ingolf Dahl, who transcribed several of Strawinsky’s compositions for piano, the movement is in three sections in which two tutti sections are placed around one solo section. According to Roman Vlad, the music is developed from a three-note motif g-b flat-g1, which is varied and developed or chordally condensed, and which forms sequences of bars whose summation is the movement and the Symphony. The second movement is constructed somewhat more clearly in the style of a Da Capo aria, A-B-A1. The third movement with its sequence of episodes however does not fall into a structurally precise classification, as labels such as Scherzo or Finale or a combination of the two do not provide an explanation of the form.

Structure

[I]

Crotchet = 160 = minim = 60 (figure 11 up to the end of figure 335)

Crotchet = crotchet (figure 34 up to the end of figure 374)

Minim = crotchet = crotchet = 80 (figure 38 up to the end of figure 874)

Quaver = crotchet = 160 (figure 88 up to the end of figure 964)

Minim = crotchet = crotchet = 80 (figure 97 up to the end of figure 1044)

Crotchet = minim = 80 (figure 105 up to the end of figure 1117)

II

Andante Quaver = 76 (figure 112 up to figure 1251)

Più mosso (figure1252 up to the end of figure 1343)

Tempo I Quaver = 76 (figure 135 up to the end of figure 1394 [attacca forward to figure 140])

Meno mosso (Con moto) Crotchet = 108 (figure 164 up to the end of figure 1074)

L’istesso tempo, tranquillo (figure 168 up to figure 1694)

Alla breve Minim = 80 (figure 1695 up to the end of figure 1813)

Agitato ma sempre l’istesso tempo (figure 182 up to the end of figure 1954)

Style: The unsettled story of the composition process is recognizable in the style which takes on elements of early Strawinsky from the pre-Classical time. Entire sections, and not just from the first movement, could come from the ballet Sacre in terms of instrumentation, while others can be compared to the Firebird and Petrushka. Overtones of the Soldier’s Tale can also be heard, likewise from Jeu de Cartes. The strings are used both percussively as well as cantabile, and likewise the piano is used soloistically as well as a part of the orchestra etc. From this point of view the Symphony has no unified and uninterrupted scale, unlike other works by Strawinsky. So many different compositional moments appear in the piece that it appears as if Strawinsky had for all purposes bound together several sketches into one single piece, but this time to a greater extent than usual. In fact, Strawinsky, by his own explanation, moved so far to musical and programmatic terrain, that every hermeneutically orientated interpreter has an abundance of material available. Strawinsky had then to interrupt himself, because it suddenly became clear to him that he was on the best route to abandoning his musical aesthetic for the sake of music which explains its contents, which in the end only proves the state of need to explain the work that he had reached.

Dedication: >Dedicated to the New York Philharmonic Symphony Society<.

Date of origin: between 1942 and August 1945.

Duration:CD: 21’17″.

First performance:24th January 1946 in the Carnegie Hall New York with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Igor Strawinsky.

War Symphony Programme: Strawinsky’s programmatic explanations allude to the events of the Second World War, through which Strawinsky had to suffer. He explained the Symphony in three movements as a being a progression of despair and hope into which images of the War were included, as he had experienced them from films. Accordingly, the first movement was written under the influence of the events in China. The tactic of scorched earth was included in this, but there were also images of simple life. The middle section of the first movement, for clarinet, piano and strings, up to figure 69 was constructed by him as a sequence of instrumental episodes to accompany a film sequence in which the Chinese were shown working in their fields. Strawinsky explained that each separate point of his music was connected to a picture from a war film, >not in a general or ideological, but specific< sense. Strawinsky went on to explain that his music accompanied these pictures quite objectively without its expressing his own feelings on the subject or opinion of the matter. He himself later recognized the connections for the last movement. The beginning was, in a style difficult to explain, partly a reaction to images of soldiers marching in a goose-step. The snappy march rhythm, the orchestration for brass and the grotesque crescendo in the tuba connect to these >abhorrentpictures<. Each episode was linked to a certain picture of the War by Strawinsky until he even came to call his Symphony >war symphony<. The static nature at the beginning of the Fugue must have a comic effect because it represents >the overturned arrogance of the Germans when their machine failed<. The exposition of the fugue and the end of the Symphony is linked to the advance of the Allies and the fact that in the Finale instead of having the sixth chords on C as one would expect, he puts them onto D, is an expression of his exceptional joy at the victory of the Allies. One rhythm (quaver-quaver rest-quaver rest-quaver-quaver rest-quaver-quaver-quaver rest) from the rumba rhythm in the timpani in the introduction to the first movement becomes a symbol of the war machine. Not even the interaction between the piano and harp lies outside the story of the War. The Fugue is the turning point at which the National Socialist war machine collapses and it is also for this reason alone that the piano and harp appear together and alone. In spite of this, the Symphony in three movements was not conceived programmatically. >Composers combine notes. That is all.< How the terrestrial events were translated by composers into music, it >is not for them to say<.

Situationsgeschichte: The explanation of the programme must be understood in the context of the situation of the time. In the general euphoria arising from the War having been won by the Americans in Europe, Strawinsky wanted to pledge himself increased awareness for his music for the first larger work to be premièred by him. Strawinsky had already had unpleasant experiences with National Socialist Germany before power was seized in 1933 when he encountered some trigger-happy SA people in a Munich restaurant in 1932 and received no help from the police there because such a thing was part of daily life at the time. With this experience, he lived through the events in Paris until he saw himself pictured in the Düsseldorf exhibition Entartete Musik; he opposed this without success, and in doing so, learning that many of his friends had split themselves into both camps, some in to that of the hunted, the others on the side of the hunter. As a result, Strawinsky differentiated clearly and very exactly in all of his written documents between Germany and National Socialism. His Jewish son-in-law (Mandelstam) was murdered by the Nationalsocialists and his son Théodore was arrested as a Russian by the French after the outbreak of war in their attempt to demonstrate their obedience, and was only set free several days later after the intervention of the Swiss authorities, half-starved and half-frozen. Soulima was later arrested by the French as a collaborator. His offence was trying to seek permission to give a few piano evenings in Germany through (failed) procuring by Strecker of Schott publishers. This time, Strawinsky had to ask Darius Milhaud, who was himself not in favour, to help his son, which succeeded. The fact that Strawinsky was one of the few notable emigrants not to return to Europe after the War, but to stay in his protective country of asylum, says everything about his feelings. On 28th December 1945, he received American citizenship. The Symphony in three movements with its four-year compositional history covers the events of the War from 1942 to 1945 like no other work. In this respect, it in fact became a War Symphony without any coarse ulterior motives. His programmatic explanations should certainly not liquidate the neo-Classical musical aesthetic, but should draw attention to the fact that deep sensibilities can stand behind modern Constructivist Art. Music written using a montage process can in the end express a great deal because, with great skill, everything can be read into it. One must take into account that Strawinsky, in relation to interpretations about the delayed start of the fugue, suspiciously approaches the hermeneutical outgrowths in the style of a Laura Rappoldi-Kahrer or Marie Schlesinger-Stephani, whom he once had fought against so passionately, or even those of a Russian Marxist musical interpretation, which to him turned out to be a result of a stupid vocabulary of concepts. In any case, he referred to images of war which had impressed themselves upon him, and did not mention having portrayed them. He referred to feelings that the pictures of the War caused in him and to what was connected with these; he did not refer to the having set these in music as his opinion. In this way he was able to announce the programme and, playing on the tide of rising emotions, strive for the contemporary success in North America which he had been deprived of so far, without wasting one word about the montage processes which in fact dominate the Symphony regardless of the programme.

Remarks: The history of the composition is spread and up to this day not clarified. The first movement was begun on 15/06/1942 at the latest and was completed on 15/10/1942. Strawinsky must have produced additional material at the beginning of the year. Alexander Tansman reports that he heard Strawinsky playing the piano at the beginning of 1942 and rediscovered something of this later in the first movement of the Symphony. It also appeared as if Strawinsky had in mind an orchestral work with solo piano. One year later, Franz Werfel encouraged him to attempt to write music to his novel, Das Lied der Bernadette, but the film project failed. In spite of this, Strawinsky completed a film scene on the Appearance of the Virgin Mary. It was included in the Symphony as the trio of the second movement. The Symphony as an official commission must have been arranged by the banker Arthur Sachs, in peacetime 1945 a co-owner of the Bank Goldman, Sachs & Co., who approximately twenty years before (1924) had visited Strawinsky on behalf of the New York Philharmonic in Biarritz and conveyed to him their invitation for him to conduct them in February 1925. According to this information, Strawinsky must have had in mind a three-movement piano-concerto work by then and already completed plans for all three movements which he incorporated after the successful commission of an orchestral symphony. That should in any case not to be brought into the history of the composition of the second movement, because one would then try with this interpretation to trace the entire work back to a reworked piano concerto. Strawinsky was also working on other pieces at this time, for example an instrumental rearrangement of Le Sacre du Printemps, of which nothing was realized apart from the ‘Sacred Dance’ at the end of the ballet. The traces of this work can be heard in the Symphony. On 20/08/1945, Strawinsky telephoned Gretl Urban and informed her of the completion of the Symphony. At the same time, he also asked for the rest of the fee negotiated in the contract of $1,500; this was $1,000, because he had already received $500. Of the intervening time, little is known.

Versions: Strawinsky did not complete a piano version of the Symphony in three movements. The rights went at first to Associated Music Publishers in New York. The contract was signed on 15/02/1945 with an agreement from 27/08/1945. The fee, which Strawinsky received, was intended for the work and the première. While he had expected the first printing to be of the pocket scores, for which a requirement seems to have existed, the publishers printed a conducting score in June 1946 which was much too large in Strawinsky’s opinion and for which there was not space on the conductor’s desk; the pages were also printed on paper that was too thick so that it could not be turned easily while conducting. According to his very disappointed letter to Gretl Urban of 27/06/1946, it must have been not so much a printed score as an overlarge photocopy on thick copying paper, of which no copy can be found in European libraries. He assumed, he went on, that this edition was a provisional printing and he expected that there would be a correct edition in the near future, which Schott but only delivered in 1951. The required pocket-score edition then came in the same year, 1946, and Associated Music Publishers printed 1045 copies, of which in the publishing half year 180 were sold and 125 were given away for free. Up to the middle of June 1947, the publishers sold a further 361 copies and gave away 9.

Print runs: Schott in Mainz, who took over the rights from Associated Music Publishers, produced 620 copies (print runs: 31st July 1951: 120; 10th July 1967: 500) of the conducting score (which, like the orchestral parts, was available to hire) up to the end of the century in 2 print runs, both in Strawinsky’s lifetime. There were 5,500 copies of the pocket score printed in 7 runs and again after Strawinsky’s death until the end of the century a further 4,700 copies in 5 print runs (print runs 12th December 1951: 1,000; 20th March 1955: 800; 2nd August 1957: 800; 6th December 1961: 800; 9th November 1962: 1,100; 10th August 1965: 1,000; 17th November 1967: 1,000 and 20/02/1974: 800; 06/10/1976: 1,000; 08/01/1980: 1,000; 23/03/1983: 1,100; 24/06/1987: 800). Schott sold around 2,500 pocket scores between the middle of 1956 and the middle of 1969. The pocket score was later included in the Eulenburg score collection.

Historical recordings: New York 28th January 1946 with the new york philharmonic orchestra under the direction of Igor Strawinsky; Hollywood 1st February 1961 with the columbia symphony orchestra under the direction of Igor Strawinsky.

CD-Edition:IV-2/1–3 (Recording 1961).

Autograph:The autograph score is in the Public Library of New York. 33 pages of the short-score version with 111 pages of sketches were transferred from the estate to the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel.

Strawinsky’s copy from his estate is on the front cover title page between name and piece title right in red with >IStr< signed and contains on the first page of the type are [p. 3] below the title head centre behind the metronome marking >[crotchet-sign] = 160< the annotation with pencil >[minim-sign = 80, now in I96I I take [minim-sign] = 96<.